Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (7 page)

He smiled a little. “You do cut right to the heart of things.”

“When I have to.”

“But small talk’s like foreplay. It sets the mood.”

She laughed. “Yes. But
you’re
using it as a tactic for stalling as opposed to seducing.”

He looked over her shoulder—just a glance—and she could tell he was uncomfortable. “You want to know why I wanted to meet
you—”

“I doubt it was to practice your sexual innuendos.”

He considered her. Then he began to walk away. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To find some shade.” He faced her, squinting in the sun. “Unless you want to get burned.”

She slipped into her sandals as gracefully as she could; then she followed him.

He was a good person, she supposed. He’d taken Arlen in. He’d even protected him—albeit from her. Under different circumstances, she might have liked him. But it was clear enough that he didn’t want her to.

She followed him to the stark line where the rocky beach ended and a tangled wood—trees and shrubs she couldn’t name—closed in. In the shade the air was ten degrees cooler. A slight breeze fanned the sweat on the back of her neck.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

They’d walked only an eighth of a mile, but Will had brought them to a large boulder, half-submerged in earth like an iceberg in water. There was no trail nearby, but little slices of the river glinted through the openings between the trees.

“This is fine,” she said, and she sat down on the large rock. Will settled himself as far away from her as the stone would permit—and facing the exact opposite direction. If he slid a few feet nearer, they would be sitting back-to-back.

She had to twist her body, hard, to see him. His hair was a messy, reddish blond—not like hers, which was sometimes red, sometimes black, depending on how the light hit it. His hair was the reddish blond that fell somewhere between beech and clay. His face was bronzed across the cheeks, nose, and forehead—weathered, she might say—though he was probably a few years younger than she was. She guessed he’d spent a lot of time outside, and from the hints of lean muscle in his arms and legs, he’d spent it working.

“Stop doing that,” he said.

“Stop what?”

“Keep your eyes on your own paper.” He pointed toward the patch of trees in front of her. “Got it?”

And then she realized—while she’d been completely engrossed by reading him, he was positioning himself not to be read.

“Sorry,” she said, and she looked straight forward. Through the trees and bushes, she could see the ruins of some old building.

“That’s better,” Will said. “Don’t move.”

She bent her knees and drew her legs up before her. Her skin prickled. She felt blindfolded. She was conscious of herself in a new, excruciating way: of the fact that she hadn’t worn a bra under her brown halter top, of the high hitch of her shorts, of the way her hair was sticking to her skin. She could feel him looking at her, scrutinizing, and she resisted the urge to fidget or talk—though she desperately wanted to.

For as long as she could remember, people who didn’t know her very well often remarked that she was a good listener. But those who were close to her knew she was more than that. What she heard when she listened wasn’t the words that were spoken, but the spaces between. And as she got older, she began to have the sense that at any given moment there were really two different worlds operating: the world of the surface, where a person could say, “I’m so sorry to hear that,” and seem to mean, “I feel bad for you”; and the world underneath the surface, where a person could say the same thing, but mean, “I don’t want to know.”

She loved people—loved them hard and with her whole heart. And she loved children especially because they didn’t fib or evade in quite the way that adults did. But she knew that if she wanted to love people fully and completely, she would have to love them with exceptional strength—to accept everything good that people wanted her to see in them and everything bad that they couldn’t hide.

As Will stared at her, she wished there was some way to explain herself to him. But he wanted to see for himself.

“So what do you want with Arlen?” he asked.

“I want to talk with him.”

“About what?”

“About what happened,” she said.

“That’s it?”

“No. No, that’s not it.”

“Tell me,” he said, his voice softening.

Her cheek was warm under his stare. She lifted her chin. “Can you imagine,” she asked, “what it was like when they told me Arlen wasn’t guilty after all? That he’d lost nine years of his life because of a trial I’d helped orchestrate?”

He said nothing.

“I was in the hospital a week ago.” She laughed a little at herself and shook her head. “As of this moment, the only other person on earth who knows that besides my doctor is you.”

“You haven’t told anyone.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“There was no reason to worry anybody.” She leaned one palm back on the rock; pebbles and grit stuck to her skin. It bothered her that after keeping her emergency room visit a secret for so long, here she was spilling her guts to a stranger—a stranger she couldn’t see even though he was only a few feet away.

“Is it your heart?” he asked.

She hadn’t realized she was touching her ribs, rubbing the spot where her heart lay quiet. Embarrassed, she drew her hand away. “I guess it was trying to tell me something.”

“What?”

For the first time, she was glad she couldn’t see him. “I owe Arlen an apology. And more.”

Will sighed, a long, masculine sound of consideration and decision making all in one. “Why didn’t you tell your parents? Your boyfriend?”

“There’s no boyfriend,” she said.

“Girlfriend?”

She laughed. “Go fish.”

“So you didn’t tell them, but you’re telling me.”

“It’s easier to tell things to strangers.” She twisted her hands together and wished she could see him. “Plus, the first thing they teach you in behavioral psychology is how important it is to reveal things about yourself if you want to establish trust.”

“You want me to trust you.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because despite what you may think, I’m not a bad person.”

“What else?” he asked.

“No one but you has the power to convince Arlen to speak with me.”

“Otherwise you wouldn’t have told me?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I did tell you. And . . . I’m glad.”

He got to his feet and made a slow circle around the giant stone—something in his languorous gait put her in mind of the big cats that paced in their cages at the zoo—until he came to stand in front of her. His arms were marked here and there with mosquito bites and scars. He ran a hand through his hair, his face shadowed with frustration. “It seems like you and Arlen both need to talk to each other.”

“Arlen wants to talk to me?”

“Hell, no. But . . . I think it might be good for him. He needs
something
. And I’m not sure that talking to you is the answer, but I’m working with what I got.”

Lauren nodded. “So you’ll help me.”

“For a price.”

She laughed a little. The pieces were coming together. Will
was
poor after all. “Money won’t be an issue. Just tell me what you need.”

“I don’t need your money,” he said. And she didn’t need to be looking to feel the shift in him, a tensing and drawing away. “I need your help. An eye for an eye.”

“What?”

“My sister Annabelle just had a baby.”

Lauren flushed. “I don’t know if I’m that good with kids . . . ”

“I don’t need you to babysit. I need you to go with me out into the field. I’ve got some great leads lined up for the next couple days, and people are much more open to letting me rummage around in their spare rooms and attics if I’ve got a woman with me.”

“So you’re a picker,” she said.

He smiled—something sharp in the pull of his lips. “Best in Virginia.”

“You don’t have a friend who can do it?”

“I don’t have a friend who
wants
to do it. It’s not exactly a glamorous job.”

Lauren mulled it over. She didn’t love the idea of traipsing around strangers’ personal junkyards and looking for antiques, but she did want Will’s help. She also wanted to show him that she was serious—that she wanted Arlen’s forgiveness and would do anything to get it. She would do her penance in outbuildings, and attics, and private junkyards.

“Look,” Will said. “You’re only here for a few days, right?”

“Hopefully less than that.”

“Well, if you help me get through these next couple leads, it’ll give me enough time to take out an ad and try to find somebody else. In return, maybe I’ll work on Arlen.
Maybe
.”

She got to her feet. Because the rock was gently sloped away, she hadn’t realized how close Will had been standing, his feet only inches from hers. Now she was close to him, closer than polite conversation allowed. She stayed as still as she could, hands at her sides, her head tipped back to hold eye contact. The polite thing would have been for him to step away. He didn’t.

“You want to keep an eye on me, don’t you?” she asked.

“You got me,” he said. “Are you healthy enough to tag along? I mean—with your . . . ”

“It’s nothing. It’s just . . . 

“It’s just that you need to square with Arlen.”

“Yes.” Her sense of smell had been trained to pick up details about a person, and men like Will usually smelled musty—like dust, grease, polish, or simply the smell of clothes left too long sitting on some floor. But Will smelled . . . fantastic. A combination of deodorant or detergent and his own natural scent. The smell didn’t fit with his wrinkled clothes and stubble; somewhere, there was a missing link. She couldn’t say if she was more bothered or intrigued.

“It’s a deal,” she said.

He shook her hand hard, palms brutishly clasping. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at five.”

“That late?”

“Five
a.m.
Try that
early
.”

“That’s not early for me,” she said. And then she kicked herself. Why did she feel the need to prove she was
tough
to this man?

“You know your way back?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m going to hang out by the river. It’s not often I get to be outside in the middle of the day.”

He looked at her once more, and she didn’t shy away; she looked back. Will’s face couldn’t be called handsome. He didn’t have a leading man’s jaw or a news anchor’s waxed hair. But his high forehead sloped down to a slightly rounded nose—not a small nose, but nice—and his mouth was a good mouth, with a curvy upper lip that a woman might not notice unless she was looking. The reddish stubble on his cheeks intrigued her; she liked men who were clean-shaven. Men who took care of themselves. Edward—and all her boyfriends, ever—had been clean-shaven. And yet,
some small part of her wondered what it might feel like to drag her cheek across such rough terrain.

He stepped aside and she walked a few feet toward the river. She held up her hand in a halfhearted good-bye.

“Lauren?”

She turned.

“If you need to call someone about that heart, you call me. I’ll take you over to the hospital, or I’ll just go over and sit with you. And I won’t tell a soul.”

“Thanks,” Lauren said. She read him for ulterior motives—his squinted-up eyes, his relaxed mouth—but found none. And the heart in question jumped once again in her chest, but for entirely unexpected reasons.